Story of my future Life

Hello everyone, while this post is a bit later than 12:00, my discussion board post is more on time.

Anyway, here is my slideshow!





Josh

Portrait Post

This week, as I'm sure you know, is for the portrait assignment.
First off is the portrait of myself:

From Digi Photo Portrait While I had someone else take this, I set it up so that I would have the light shine against the side of my face as to give a reasonable amount of contrast throughout the picture.  I also chose to use a prop, which in this case was a stick.  Another thing is that the photo was taken from a slight lower angel.  The rule of thirds isn't followed on this one and I am centered in the picture.  I feel like this gives it a cool calm feel overall and it's also kinda natury cause of the stick and branches.  I changed the colors around a little when I edited it, but that is about the extent of my editing on it. Next here I have a picture of my friend John from my church. From Digi Photo Portrait John is posing in a nice way and is positioned by way of the rule of thirds.  The side lighting in this case keeps the lighting fairly even while keeping it noticeable which die the light is coming from. The picture has a yellowy tint as the stained glass windows are yellow. It may not be the most interesting picture, but I think that it came out well and that John made for a nice victim of my photography, even if he was reluctant at first. For this one all I did was balance the colors a bit more off of the yellowy ness, but obviously I could not completely. Lastly I have a picture of my girlfriend sitting on some steps: From Digi Photo Portrait I gave her plenty of room to look into as she stares off into the distance.  The look on her face makes it look like she is thinking, of what we do not know! I positioned her with the rule of thirds in a way that worked with the steps and the lighting.  I think that this photo came out fairly well as I am pleased with the way it looks. For this photo I cropped t a bit and changed the colors around to make it more vibrant. Hmm seems to be a trend that I like putting people on the right on the picture.. hmmm very interesting. Josh

Week 10: Cloning, Painting and Text

Hello all,
We are on week 10 now and I have my pictures ready to show all of you.

Painting:
So for my painting picture, what I did was to change the color of a flower from red to purple.

Original:

From Digi Photo Clone Stamp Color

What I did first was to take the bucket tool and change the threshold of what colors it would cover and then proceed to cover the entire flower.  After this, what I did was to turn the black windows a different color, I don't even know why, I just did.  Lastly, I used the brush tool to change the stem color by adding a layer of 25% opaque red over it.

Modified:

From Digi Photo Clone Stamp Color

Cloning:

What I did for my cloning picture was to take two piles of wood, one smaller than the other, and clone the larger one over the smaller one.  In the end I wanted to have two larger piles of wood!

Original:

From Digi Photo Clone Stamp Color

What I did for this picture was to start by finding the best position to use the cloning tool to start from.  I decided that the best place for this was to start from the side farthest from where I was putting the wood.  After some tedious brushwork, the wood pile came into place and looks about what I think it should look like.  

Modified:

From Digi Photo Clone Stamp Color

Text:

Lastly, I took a picture I had taken of a salt and pepper shaker upon a window sill.

Original:

From Digi Photo Clone Stamp Color

What I wanted to do to it was to just add a simple bit of text in order to make it fun and warm hearted.  Hope you like it!

Modified:

From Digi Photo Clone Stamp Color

And I believe that it is for this week fellow classmates, hope you all have a good weekend.
Josh

Burning, Dodging and Filtering Stuff

Hello visitors,
Below lies what I have done this week for the Burn, Dodge and Filter assignment.

Burn:
First off will be my dodge and burn picture.  What I have done here is taken a picture of myself and made it highly stylized in a sense that it has very high contrast due to lots of use of the dodge and burn tools along with the cartoon filter also on top of it.  I increased the contrast of my face to the background via the burn and dodge tools, which led to a picture with a very dark background and a very bright face.  Lastly, I cropped it to be more focused and have better composition.

Original:

From Dodge Burn

The end result is mainly that I think it looks a bit like the figures you see in stained glass, which I find to be a cool look.  And while It does show many things such as my cheek dimples that I had no idea I had and how I didn't shave, I find this to be kinda cool as it adds more random details to the picture.  After all, I'm not trying to achieve perfection here.

Modified:

From Dodge Burn

Filtering:

Secondly in this assignment, we move on to the batch of pictures with the filters put onto them.
First off, this picture I took back in 2006 I believe with my first digital camera, a Fujifilm Finepix A400, a very basic point and shoot.  I hadn't realized how good the picture had come out until now...
The picture is one of the many I took on a cruise and this one happens to be Key West.  The picture is just of a few houses, palm trees and the road, but I like it.

Original:

From Dodge Burn

Now, what I did here was to boost the reds a considerable amount as to have the red flowers on the left stand out quite a bit.  Next, I changed the contrast around a bit... or maybe I did this before the red flowers, I cannot remember.  So, anyway.  Next, what I did was to apply the oil paint filter on it so that it looked like a painting.

Modified:

From Dodge Burn

If you don't think it looks a lot different then you are right, It looked considerably different at full resolution and full screen.


Lastly, of course I did yet another photo with a filter added to it!
This last one was not the most difficult ever, but I think the end result is pretty psychedelic, so it's fun.
I took a picture that I had of three crab apples and started away.

Original:

From Dodge Burn

First, I burned the background area with the burn tool and put a few layers of that there to emphasize contrast.  Before this I had cropped the picture in order to be something I was more pleased with composition wise.  Next, I took the predator filter and just slapped that right on there and the result was quite interesting.
Take a look!

Modified:

From Dodge Burn

As you can see, quite colorful to say the least.

I hope you enjoyed my photos everyone!
Have a good week.

Josh

Color Contrast and Cropping

I always try to think of fun names for my blog posts and I think I did relatively well this week, but I'm sure that you are more interested in what picture I have to bring.

My first picture was taken coming up the hill towards my house, when I was driving up it I thought it would make a nice picture.  Unfortunately, the picture turned out quite a bit too blue tinted, making it a perfect candidate for color editing!

Original:

From Digi Photoshop 2

It was certainly not too hard to tell what had to be done here, but changing the colors to what I wanted took a bit of thought.  I used the threshold tool to change the colors around to be more natural and less saturated with blue.  I found that selecting the blackest area, gray area and whitest area feature was quite helpful in achieving what I was looking for.  After reaching an acceptable outcome, I went on to the color curve tool and adjusted again to made the trees on the outside stand out better.  At least I cropped a bit of the photo and then declared that I was finished.

Final Version:

From Digi Photoshop 2

This next picture of my sister that I took while I was ice skating a month or so ago. I found the picture to be quite dark and certainly needed some changed in terms of contrast and color.  I wanted her to stand out from the background better, but not make the snow overly bright at the same time.

Original:

From Digi Photoshop 2

What I first did was similar in process to my first picture.  I used the color threshold feature to brighten everything up, but found that the ice was far brighter than I wished it to be.  Next I had to work with the color curve feature in order to make sure that my sister was not too washed out when I was finished.  I added a bit of red to the photo in this manner and that seemed to help it, I thought.
Lastly, I cropped the photo in order to change the composition and determined that It looked better in portrait format.

Final Product:

From Digi Photoshop 2

In the end I decided that I was fairy pleased by my results and I find it kinda fun to do this!  I hope you all will agree!
Thanks for reading!

Josh

Hello again everyone.  I hope you will all enjoy my "wonderful" manipulated photos.  I think they are great :)
First off I started with a picture of a lamppost, usually not the most interesting thing (unless you are in Narnia of course), but I decided that even lampposts need accessories too.  To start with, it would be good for all of you to know that I am using GIMP, therefore my terms will be related to that.

Original:

From Digi Photo Photoshop 1

First off in the process I individually cut every object out from its surroundings as Lisa did in the selecting tutorial.  I actually used the magic scissors the most as they seemed to be the most helpful, but I also used the lasso for getting things that the scissors left behind.

After taking a long time to figure things out, I think it came out reasonably well.  I resized the sunglasses, hat, and gloves to fit my figure.  I also modified the colors on the items to make them fit in a bit better as my house lighting is not quite outside lighting.. at all.

And, I think that's it, see the finished product!

Edited Photo: (see if you can tell the difference)

From Digi Photo Photoshop 1

My next photo is that of the sky/trees right next to my house, was quite a basic picture, and for the most part still is, but it now holds one great feature, a TARDIS.  For all those who do NOT know what a TARDIS is and for that matter, Doctor Who, please go on wikipedia to discover how awesome it is.  For the basica description, TARDIS means Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, so it is a space space/time traveling vessel to sum it up.

The TARDIS is built out of Legos and retains the general shape of it.  I wanted to give it a look as if the TARDIS was flying right by me.

Original:

From Digi Photo Photoshop 1

Of course, I started out by cutting out the TARDIS from my other picture by use of the laso, magic scissors and color selector to erase the background.  The biggest problem I came to was that the lighting had produced certain colors on the figure and some parts got cut out when I used the color selector.  I fixed this by pretty much patching the areas with other areas of the ship.

The last thing I did was to indicate that it was moving.  What I did was to copy the layer that the Tardis was on and put a motion blur on one of them and put the clear one on top.  This was to ensure that the picture would stay relatively clear, but also have the desired motion blur.  I did add a bit of blur to the top one, but not nearly as much.  Also I increased the brightness of the light on top by adjusting its hue.  All I had to do was lasso it and throw the settings on and tada, that worked.
And here is the result!

Edited Photo:

From Digi Photo Photoshop 1

Hope you enjoyed the picture, if you have any questions, please ask!

Josh

Landscapin'

I found finding more landscape photos to be kinda annoying as I had already taken a reasonable amount and didn't want to reuse them. So here are some photos I took for my landscape project!

From Digi Photo Landscapes What I was going for in this photo was for it to feel like it was looking through a gate of trees.   I think it came out as I had planned it to for the most part and the trees are positioned about where I wanted them, making it successful in my eyes.  I would have much rather taken this picture without so much snow on the ground.  All the snow just makes the world colorless basically and I am not as happy as I could be with it  From Digi Photo Landscapes  This is a picture of the apple trees nearby my house.  I was going for a sort of eerie look as apple trees tend to look sorta creepy, I think that aspect worked.  The trees are well positioned in the picture and stand out well against the background, I think that was the most successful part.  Of course, as with the first, I would have liked there not to be snow so I could take outdoor pictures with more than 3 colors.  Otherwise I think this photo is alright, but has no really impressive elements about it. From Digi Photo Landscapes  I find this picture quite similar to the one before it, the main difference being the inclusion of a stonewall, a different tree and a bit more color.  What I thought was successful about this picture was having more than the usual colors...  I suppose this isn't the best reason to include this, but it worked for me.  I'd say that the framing is a bit off and that it could have been taking at a better angle and with better lighting in general.  I would change those tings If I did it again. From Digi Photo Landscapes  Main intent for this picture was to capture the stonewall doing whatever t is doing and I suppose I did capture that accurately.  I would say that is my favorite part about it.  My least favorite parts where how that plant on the left seemed to pop right up into the pic without my knowledge.  My other complaint is that sign over there, I couldn't move it so it had to stay unfortunately.  I would change where I was taking the picture from if I redid it, maybe go father on down the wall.  Or wait till spring, that would be more interesting for sure. From Digi Photo Composition This last picture is one of my preferred ones.  I was aiming for an old barn look and well, yeah I definitely did that.  Too bad the barn wasn't red or some other interesting color, but I suppose it worked out ok.  My favorite part would have to be how the door is ajar as it makes it a bit more interesting in a mysterious manner.  Of course the composition is alright too so I think the photo came out fine.  What I didn't like and wish I could change would certainly be the lighting.  A nice amount of sun would do this picture good and this is the one picture I think I took that looks best in the winter, so that isn't as much of a complaint.

Outdoor Composition Adventures

Sorry that this is a little late, most probably expected it to be earlier... oh well.
Here is my slideshow for this week and I hope you enjoy the pictures I took.  They were all taken outside and a lot of them are mostly white, because snow of course is white, but there is a bit of color in there.

Week 5 Compositional Studies

While I was reading about photo composition, I was amazed to see all that I could do.  One of the biggest things that I thought was interesting was balancing the picture.  I never thought of having to put something on the other side to balance out and gauge the strength of an object to balance it correctly.  It's a kit to work with along with everything else.  Another one was viewpoint, i always knew that viewpoint could be important, but I never think about it enough.  Of course I had never thought of taking a low or high angle shot either, or at least not in a conscious sense.  Having these thoughts in my mind should be able to help me figure things out!  I can see why it is important to take MANY MANY pictures of a subject under different conditions, seeing how easy that is to do with a digital camera.
In photos, aesthetics is important because it is judging whether something is "good or bad" in your own eyes.  If you don't like the pictures you are taking, then try something different that will please you.  Since aesthetics is opinion based it leads to a whole bunch of creativity and ideas being put into photos, which is why there is so much variety between pictures.  That is what I think about that.
One thing I noticed that I learned from filmography is that 3 point lighting does not really seem to be part of anything, most photographers use the shadows produced by one or two lights to create a certain feel , which of course is what makes good pictures.  It is possible that 3 point lightning is only used in things like school photos, but I do not know.  Hmmm... Just a thought.

Josh

Magical Colors

Hello everyone, this week was of course about color pictures!  With the choice of either single color, complimentary color, or contrasting colors, I still had trouble finding things.

Personally, I liked this picture a lot.  It is kinda mysterious, and dark.  It also exemplifies a mono-color setting in which everything is pretty brownish, which may not be exciting, but it has a nice feel to it.  I also like the shadows it casts.  It is really just a window sill and the lock on top of it.  It has a lot of dust on it which adds to the texture and to the photo in my opinion.  Of course, this is an example of my work and preference so as long as I am happy I suppose....  Sorry about the blue reflection, this was my favorite picture, but I didn't manage to get a good one when I got rid of the reflection.

From Digi Photo, Color Light  As for my second picture, I decided to do the contrasting colors.  It isn't PERFECTLY contrasting, but I think that it is enough that I can put it up without Lisa getting too mad.  I like this picture because of the dark red contrasting with the blueish background. From Digi Photo, Color Light Overall, I would say that my color photos aren't the best, but they are alright.  I feel like I could have done a better job on them.  Hopefully next week will be more successful.  I'd love if you looked at my other photos in my Picasa album available at the link beneath the photos.  Feedback is always fun, I just want to show my pictures, even if they don't fit the guidelines. Josh

Lighting Adventure

 Good afternoon all!
In advance, I am sorry to say that there are no cows in these pictures to those who were expecting them. :)
For this special event I ventured outside to search for my pictures, as my previos pictures have been indoors.  The area I used was just around my house, nothing too special for me, but I hope it might be for you!

This first picture I took was in afternoon, around 3:30PM or so.  The light is bright and everything is well illuminated by the sun.  I think it is more overexposure than haze in the picture, but as you can see it was a nice looking day.

From Digi Photo, Color Light This second photo was taken at  8:00AM just before I headed out to work It was a cloudy day so there is little vibrancy to the whole picture, you can also see the haziness in the distance.  This picture certainly improves the clarity of the hills in the background while making the sky a lot less bright. I would say It is a reasonable landscape, but I like the vibrant lighting from the first one a bit more. From Digi Photo, Color Light  My third shot of the landscape was around the same time as the first, but was on the cloudy day.  The big difference between them is how the clouds lit up the sky in the picture and caused it to look a little washed out in sections.  The way the colors blend together make it more difficult to tell the distant hills apart which was one of the nice features of the first two photos.  I also like the warmth that the sun gave to the first picture over the plainness of this third photo. From Digi Photo, Color Light Comparing all three, I an say I like the warmth of the first, but like the exposure level of the second picture the most, as it isn't overexposed.  I could improve upon that by waiting for the sun to set a little longer or taking it from a different angle.

The Cllage of Randomivity

Hello again everyone!
All of the photos in my collage were taken inside as I am not a big fan of cold weather and avoid it when I can.  For another project I may go out to explore what lurks in the cold.
It was fun taking the pictures, that much is for sure. but the hardest part of it was finding something that could actually be used to make a nice close up picture.  Exploring all over my house multiple times (and my workplace) I eventually found subjects that are worthy enough for me.
My personal favorites are the pictures of my mom's Christmas cactus as it also looked as I was looking though branches of a tree, just on a miniature scale.
Also the picture of the sewing machine came out surprisingly nice and I do like that one  too, it has a nice vintage look to it. And as for that top right picture and it's neighbor on the right, the purple one us a picture of a window reflected in a DVD and the one adjacent on the right is looking through a glass Coca Cola cup.
Enjoy the picture!  You can view the full version here

From Collages

Josh

Veggies in the night

Hello everyone!  Here I have a few photos I have taken for the Point of View assignment. You can view more of my photos here on Picasa My target of choice was a large piece of cauliflower, some celery, and a plate of carrots. For both pictures I turned my target as I didn't have a better background to shoot against. The first picture here is a shot from the front of the cauliflower.  There isn't a whole lot of light on it and the low ISO sensitivity makes it looks even darker.  I myself think the shadows add a nice look to the image and the low ISO makes the picture have little grain and have a nice smooth look to it.  I very much like this photo considerably more than the next, but the other one is still alright.

From Digital Photo

Photo number 2 is the same image flipped 180 degrees.  I chose this one because it was still nice looking from behind in that the organization of the veggies looks good.  I don't like the positioning as much as the first picture though, this is because of course I set them up to look nice from the front, not the back..  Also the picture is quite different in the way that it is much brighter and the lighting doesn't have as much of a dark feel to it.

From Digital Photo THOUGH, my favorite pictures were the fun ones I took after taking the first bunch.  Here are 2 examples. From Digital Photo From Digital Photo Hope you enjoyed my photos! Josh

First Week Thoughts

Taking pictures seems like it will be easy to start, but almost impossible to master.  Good camera equipment I'm sure helps take some shots as with a DSLR focusing up on something and snapping the shot just does wonders.  I will have to ask my dad if I can borrow his Nikon D100 (HE HAS 2!!) because I'm sure it would be nice to be able to take nice picture, but also learn more about the nicer features of a nicer camera.
I am a bit nervous on if I will be able to take the kind of pictures that I need to be in this class, but hopefully everything will go alright.
Think that is all, just wanted to speak my mind.

Josh